I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation.
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“It still appears that consumers will not be able to completely opt-out of data collection and information sharing among Google’s services,” wrote Markey.

The idea that people should be able to opt out of a company’s privacy policy strikes me as ludicrous. They can certainly object to it, and not be a customer of the company. Or object to a company sharing their information with third parties in new ways. But that’s not what’s happening here. I’ve already made this argument, though, so I’ll let my friends from Xtranormal debate it:

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I love the brilliant way the folks at Xtranormal have of distilling a debate to its most fundamental issues. The root problem is that people want it both ways. They want robust web services and content without any pay wall, but don’t want ads. They want to use Google, but don’t want to comply with the contractual terms of service. They chafe at how much information is collected by service providers, yet demand and use services that require personalized informatiom and they expect convenience, yet are unwilling to trade anything in return. You said it best when you observed “The idea that people should be able to opt out of a company’s privacy policy strikes me as ludicrous.”

Anybody ever consider mandating that the data is stored locally or a third party, and having the provider (Google or FB for instance) provide the (documented) mining app? They mine your data stored locally, and just pass back the fascinating tidbits via APIs.

Your personal data is just a means to an end. Not to be anti-cloud, but if users store peronsal data where they control it and just give search permissions to specific data and specific providers via local apps, the issue is contained somewhat.